How Do You Feel About Telltale's Direction?

Just like the good old days, back when a simple discussion of who the best male and female users on the forum were could turn into half the people here changing their avatars to eyevatars... and still seem perfectly natural.

i really can't believe that people who claim to be point and click adventure game fans would actually say that the walking dead game isn't a game and has no gameplay, seriously what do old school point and click adventures have in terms of gameplay that the walking dead doesn't have? (i don't count harder puzzles as more game play)

i think there is a large audience that would like more challenging puzzles, but just not done in the same way that the old school games do it, it's hard to explain but there is more than one type of getting stuck in an adventure game, the type that i hate and i think is the reason adventure games aren't as popular now is the type of stuck when you have no idea what you are supposed to do and no goal or objective (or the goal or objective you have is like 5 puzzles away) so you end up just going everywhere in the game, pixel scanning and using everything on everything until you finally get back into the story, another kind of stuck is when you know exactly what you are supposed to do but you haven't figured out how, so you explore everywhere trying to find the solution to the problem and that is the type of getting stuck in a game that is good.

perhaps telltale have concentrated more on trying to avoid the first kind of stuck and less on enhancing the second kind, but it seems to me that telltale are trying to improve what adventure games are all about and not just redoing the exact same thing over and over and i think that is good.

OK. Clearly, we need to re-evaluate the genre of "adventure game". And as a mod, I am officially stepping in to do so, because apparently you're all too hopelessly engaged in pointless arguments to do it yourselves.

Ahem.

The traditional adventure game, the one Telltale started off making, are what shall henceforth be known as "Classic Adventures". Games that have a strong emphasis on puzzle solving that work in context with the story to allow further progress. Your Monkey Islands, your Sam & Maxes, your Broken Swords (except for #3, obviously) - they all fall under this category, especially if they're practically unplayable without a mouse cursor.

The more recent adventure games that focus much more on telling a strong story with basic (or non-existent) puzzles are "Story Adventures". These would include Telltale's more recent efforts - BTTF, Jurassic Park and The Walking Dead - where the emphasis is on character interaction and strong narratives, with very little to do in terms of full-on puzzles beyond basic fetch quests.

Games like Professor Layton, which have a strong narrative but puzzles which are practically unconnected to them and serve more as minigames than traditional puzzles shall henceforth be known as "Puzzle Adventures", and really, we need more of these, especially on the (3)DS. Ever think about porting the Puzzle Agent games over to a handheld, Telltale? Would probably sell pretty well...

Games that make you hunt through numerous pictures to find a certain number of hidden objects shall be known as "Failed Adventures", and can FUCK RIGHT OFF.

These terms are now legal and binding, and anyone not using them will be immediately banned.

OK. Clearly, we need to re-evaluate the genre of "adventure game". And as a mod, I am officially stepping in to do so, because apparently you're all too hopelessly engaged in pointless arguments to do it yourselves.

Ahem.

The traditional adventure game, the one Telltale started off making, are what shall henceforth be known as "Classic Adventures". Games that have a strong emphasis on puzzle solving that work in context with the story to allow further progress. Your Monkey Islands, your Sam & Maxes, your Broken Swords (except for #3, obviously) - they all fall under this category, especially if they're practically unplayable without a mouse cursor.

The more recent adventure games that focus much more on telling a strong story with basic (or non-existent) puzzles are "Story Adventures". These would include Telltale's more recent efforts - BTTF, Jurassic Park and The Walking Dead - where the emphasis is on character interaction and strong narratives, with very little to do in terms of full-on puzzles beyond basic fetch quests.

Games like Professor Layton, which have a strong narrative but puzzles which are practically unconnected to them and serve more as minigames than traditional puzzles shall henceforth be known as "Puzzle Adventures", and really, we need more of these, especially on the (3)DS. Ever think about porting the Puzzle Agent games over to a handheld, Telltale? Would probably sell pretty well...

Games that make you hunt through numerous pictures to find a certain number of hidden objects shall be known as "Failed Adventures", and can FUCK RIGHT OFF.

These terms are now legal and binding, and anyone not using them will be immediately banned.

- END OF LINE -

i agree with these classifications but there needs to be a classification for classic adventure games that still give the same aspects of classic games but aren't stuck in the past, because that is the type adventure games i want to play

i agree with these classifications but there needs to be a classification for classic adventure games that still give the same aspects of classic games but aren't stuck in the past, because that is the type adventure games i want to play

i agree with these classifications but there needs to be a classification for classic adventure games that still give the same aspects of classic games but aren't stuck in the past, because that is the type adventure games i want to play

I'd still class those under "Classic", because, as you say, they have classic aspects to them and they're still the same sort of game, just with a few modern elements to them.

OK. Clearly, we need to re-evaluate the genre of "adventure game". And as a mod, I am officially stepping in to do so, because apparently you're all too hopelessly engaged in pointless arguments to do it yourselves...

Even that list doesn't begin to scratch the surface. I was once going to group the adventure games I cover in my blog into categories, and I realized there are really hundreds of sub-genres of the adventure genre, making it an impossible task.

As I said in another topic, the adventure genre has been constantly evolving since the day it started in 1975 (well, at least since it took off in 1977). The Adventure International games were different from Colossal Cave Adventure, the Infocom games were different from the Adventure International games, the Sierra games were different from the Infocom games, the LucasArts games were different from the Sierra games (and, even then, the early games from any of these companies were different from their later games). Throw companies like Cyan, Revolution, and Telltale into the mix and you have more differing game styles (add the later games from these companies into the mix, and you have even more differing game styles).

I said in the post I linked above that adventure games consisted of "an inventory and puzzles to solve", but MusicallyInspired corrected me in that what makes an adventure is a story and puzzles (any puzzles, difficulty has never had any bearing on genre). "Puzzles" is just a blanket term, because like Vainamoinen said, an argument on what constitutes "puzzles" can last for hundreds of pages in a thread.

These arguments are pointless anyway, since people have always been stubborn about their favorite genres for as long as they have existed. There are still people out there who refuse to acknowledge that graphic adventures and text adventures are sub-genres of the same overall genre.

See, now, I worded my choices VERY carefully so that every game you could think of as an 'adventure' would fall under one of those four subgenres. I didn't just throw them out willy-nilly. I PLANNED this thing. Like, properly.

You give me an example - anything - and I'll tell you exactly why it's one of those four. Without fail.